Irenaeus and the Starting Point of Theology

In The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching, Irenaeus presents "a manual of essentials" of the faith. In modern terms, this document might be called a systematic theology. One of the things I find fascinating about this is the way Irenaeus begins. Every theology has to have a starting point: a central fact from which the rest flows. This could be a philosophical argument for the existence of God, the inspiration of the Bible, God's self-revelation in nature or creation, the event of the Incarnation, the cross, etc.

Irenaeus, however, doesn't start with any of these. He begins with baptism:

First of all it bids us bear in mind that we have received baptism for the remission of sins, in the name of God the Father, and in the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who was incarnate and died and rose again, and in the Holy Spirit of God. And that this baptism is the seal of eternal life, and is the new birth unto God, that we should no longer be the sons of mortal men, but of the eternal and perpetual God (3).

Thus, theology doesn't begin with a proposition, a statement, or a thought; not even a statement about Christ or the cross. Rather, theology begins with an event: God's regeneration of us through the Holy Spirit, uniting us with the crucified Christ and His body, the church. I hope I am not wrong about this, but it seems like a big deal. It seems to be quite radical. Some implications I see:

• Theology is not about us understanding God but about God revealing Himself to us; not just in a general sense (Jesus reveals the Father to the world) but in a personal sense (God reveals Himself to me through the Holy Spirit).
• Belief can't be separated from action (as Irenaeus makes clear from the outset). Theology and practice are interdependent.
• Theology is a task of the church. It absolutely cannot be done elsewhere.

Having begun with baptism, Irenaeus uses the baptismal formula as the framework for what will follow. Being baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is more than just an affirmation of a prior belief in the Trinity. It is what we are baptized into and thus gives shape to everything we believe.

The Mystery of Christ Thoughts on Ch. 1

John Behr's premise is compelling: our starting point for theology should be an examination of how the earliest Christians came to believe what they did. Our tendency is to start with statements such as the Nicene Creed, but the creeds cannot be properly understood apart from the process that led to their creation. Upon this premise Behr writes The Mystery of Christ, a brief systematic theology.

For Behr, then, theology starts at the cross viewed in light of the resurrection. This was the event in which Jesus was revealed as God. But even this could not be understood without Jesus revealing it to his followers, through the breaking of bread and opening of the scriptures. Already at this point I was sold on Behr's project. Here is a theology that flows directly from the Gospel accounts of Jesus, is immediately concerned with the transformation of the believer, and provides a justification for the worship of the church from the very beginning.

This theological method has some interesting consequences. Most prominently, Behr suggests that we need to "take seriously the exegetical practices of the apostles and the early Christians." This is rather challenging, because in modern eyes early exegesis often looks either esoteric or naive. I have long believed (in theory) that we should be reading the Church Fathers. But whenever I have actually done so, the things they say about scripture have often been too weird to be of any use. After reading Behr, though, I think that the problem is we assume they were reading scripture the same way we are, but coming to strange conclusions. In fact though, the ancient Christians had a whole different way of using scripture.

There is the most distance between us and them when we read the Old Testament. For the earliest Christians, the Old Testament spoke directly about Christ, and it was the only scripture they had. We don't view the OT in this way, though. Scholarship tends to view it as a Jewish story that Christians have latched on to. Evangelicals read it as the OT as the story leading up to Christ, with a few prophecies about him thrown in.

Behr describes a radically different way of doing theology. I like it very much on a theoretical level. I have not yet figured out how it will affect my faith on a more practical level, but I think it will.

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